Germantown tutor, coach charged with sex abuse

Alleged victim a 16-year-old girl, police say

A 30-year-old Germantown man who had been working as a private tutor and athletic coach has been arrested and charged with sexually abusing the teenage girl he was teaching.

According to police, Daniel Mandel Sirotkin, of the 17300 block of Autumn Harvest Court, has been charged with two counts of sex abuse of a minor and three third-degree sex offenses.

Police began investigating Sirotkin in November after Montgomery County Public School officials told police that Sirotkin was engaging in “inappropriate contact” with students, according to a police press release detailing his arrest. The alleged acts did not take place on school property, according to Montgomery County Police Officer Janelle Smith, a police spokeswoman.

Schools spokesman Dana Tofig said a friend of the victim alerted a school administrator of the alleged abuse. That school administrator then contacted police, Tofig said.

According to police, he was in contact with students from public and private schools in Bethesda and Potomac. Tofig said Sirotkin previously worked as a substitute teacher within the school system but could not name specific schools where he had taught.

Montgomery County Police Cpl. Rebecca Innocenti declined to say what sport Sirotkin coached, or name the schools where some of his students attended, saying that police wanted to try to protect the privacy of the victim of the alleged abuse.

Sirotkin has been charged with alleged crimes against one student. Police declined to explain whether he had would be charged with abusing other students or if he had engaged in inappropriate behavior with other minors.

His LinkedIn profile listed him as working at Aerotek, a staffing agency in Rockville. A woman who answered the phone there said that Sirotkin “mostly kept to himself,” and worked at the agency only a short time before finding a new job.

Robinson Rowe, an attorney who represented him on a public urination charge — which was eventually dismissed — in April in Montgomery County, confirmed that Sirotkin had attended Harvard University. He said he did not yet know if he would be defending Sirotkin against the more recent charges, adding that he had not yet been retained to do so.

Sirotkin is being held on $100,000 bail, online court records show.

A phone number listed to his residence was not active Tuesday afternoon.